Cinder inhaled slowly, his breath warm against my shoulder. Vulnerable. Human. Mortal. And I understood something else from the legend Emile had told me. The frost did not vanish when you found your Ástmaki. It changed purpose.
Cinder made a soft sound in his sleep—not a word, just a murmur, something content and unconscious—and burrowedcloser. His fingers curled against my side, finding the spaces between my ribs like they were designed to fit there.
I loved him.
The thought arrived without fanfare, without the dramatic crash of revelation I'd been bracing for. It was just there. Quiet. Obvious. Like it had been true for weeks and my brain had finally stopped arguing with my chest about it.
I loved him, and the knowledge of it was so enormous I couldn't breathe around it.
I pressed my lips to the top of his head, wanting this every morning for the rest of my very long life.
The thought sobered me. Because my lifewasvery long—centuries, potentially, if nothing killed me first—and his wasn't—not at the moment, anyway. Even I knew that would change if he accepted me.
Cinder stirred around nine, surfacing slowly—not the sharp, immediate wakefulness of someone trained to respond to alarms, but a gradual return, like a diver ascending from deep water. His lashes fluttered. His fingers tightened on my ribs. Then his eyes opened, unfocused and soft, and found my face.
"Hi," he said, voice rough with sleep.
"Hi."
"What time is it?"
"Just after nine."
He groaned, pressing his face back into my chest. "We're supposed to be at Ignatius's at ten."
"We are."
"That requires moving."
"It does."
"I'm lodging a formal complaint."
I smiled into his hair. "Noted."
He didn't move for another three minutes. Neither did I. The rain kept falling, and my apartment existed in that suspended,gray-morning state where nothing outside the walls felt entirely real.
When he finally rolled off me, he did it with the reluctance of someone peeling off a warm shirt. He sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes, his bare back turned toward me. I watched the shift of his shoulder blades, the freckles scattered across his pale skin, the old scar on his side that he'd never explained and I'd never asked about because I understood, better than most, the weight of stories you weren't ready to tell.
"Shower?" he asked without turning around.
"Go ahead. I'll make coffee."
He paused, and I could see the debate playing out in the set of his shoulders—the part of him that wanted to invite me in versus the part that was still weighing how much time we had.
He padded toward the bathroom.
I exhaled slowly once the door closed. My dragon rumbled—low, satisfied, possessive in a way that should have embarrassed me but didn't. The coffee was ready by the time he emerged, dressed in jeans and a gray sweater I immediately loved.
He sipped the coffee, watching me over the rim the way he'd watched me last night—steady, certain, seeing everything I tried to hide. "You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Looking at me like you want to say something and then deciding not to."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Took a very deliberate sip of my own coffee.
"There it is," he said mildly. "The great goaltender, stopped by his own feelings. Someone alert the press."